MARY AND JESUS - HOW WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW

20th December 2009 : Advent 3 : Year C
9:30am Camillo
The Baptism of Kai Justin Reynolds
Micah 5:2-5a : Hebrews 10:5-10 : Luke 1:39-45

In his CD talk, Mary and non-violence, Richard Rohr makes the observation that we don’t know a lot about Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, from the Christian scriptures. But he goes on to say with great insight that the primary source of our knowledge about this remarkable woman is her son, Jesus.

Rohr points out that when we look through the eyes of Jesus we are also seeing with Mary’s eyes. It’s a phenomenon that any reasonably attentive parent will notice, as their children – from a breathtakingly early age – pick up and reproduce even the slightest mannerism or twitch or behaviour.

I noticed it first when I saw that my son, Iain, then aged about two or three, frowned the way his grandfather frowned. At the time I thought it somewhat strange because Iain didn’t spend a lot of time with his grandfather, my Dad. Now, sometimes I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed and on this occasion I was clearly still waiting for the whetstone… But I eventually figured out that Iain’s frown came, not from his grandfather, but from me; and I was the one who picked it up from my father and hence transmitted the frown with all its subtlety to my son.

Now, we’d have to admit that Jesus would have picked up a great deal from his father, Joseph. Joe is on the scene for at least the first twelve years of Jesus’ life. Luke tells us as much in the story about the very precocious kid Jesus staying behind in the Temple while Joseph and Mary set off without him, notice he’s missing and return to Jerusalem to find him lecturing his betters… But after this – no more Joseph. The best guess we can make is that Joe kicked the bucket somewhere between Jesus’ twelfth birthday and his public ministry at the age of thirty. But given that Jesus is known to the townsfolk as Mary’s son, it’s likely his Dad died before Jesus became an adult at the age of thirteen…

So Mary likely had a huge influence on Jesus’ growing years, the period of time we in the west call adolescence, which is a relatively recent invention. And what we hear of Mary in these early chapters of Luke’s gospel suggest that she had what we would call today a powerful social consciousness – that she was very concerned about social justice and understood very well the message of the Living God in the Hebrew scriptures – that God desires mercy, not sacrifice; that God cares about the widow and the orphan. In other words, about the poor and the oppressed and the marginalised.

So it is that we arrive at the powerful poem our tradition entitles The Magnificat. Its clear message of solidarity with the poor and denunciation of the rich and powerful prefigures Jesus’ own social concerns by some three decades. That Jesus speaks with unparalleled authority, assuredness and confidence does not diminish Mary’s influence. If anything, it reinforces her position as primary role model to the boy who grew into a man convinced of his vocation to convey good news to the poor.

Nor is it likely that Mary beat this into Jesus… Mary is the woman who in Luke’s gospel ponders deeply on some pretty powerful and amazing events. She doesn’t jump to conclusions, she doesn’t pretend to understand what was beyond her – or anyone else’s – capacity to understand.

Instead, she “keeps things in her heart”. In other words, she ruminates in a healthy way. She considers deeply the meaning of things. At times she seems to understand her eldest child. At other times she appear as bewildered and confused as anyone else among Jesus’ followers.

It all goes together as part of the difficult and enthralling journey of faith into which the rest of us enter when we are baptised. Our aim as followers of Jesus is to see with his eyes, which are arguably also the eyes of Mary.

This is a good thing because Mary gives us that capacity to step back and ponder. This is not – and must never become – an attempt to arrive at any kind of understanding of things that mostly defy understanding. Rather, this business of symbolically removing ourselves from the midst of difficult situations allows us to stand with God and gain greater clarity with regard to any given situation.

Ultimately, it allows us to surrender ourselves to the Living God so that God can begin the work of transformation that is the essence of our spiritual journey. We will shortly be witnessing the formal beginning of such a journey when Kai comes to be baptised. The actual journey began long before this moment, probably before Kai was even conceived.

That is essentially a statement of and from faith. We don’t know – and it doesn’t matter that we don’t know. What matters is whether we are prepared to spend time with God learning about God’s ways and learning to see with Jesus’ and Mary’s eyes.

So when Kai is baptised he will publicly and outwardly begin his own journey of faith. None of us can know where that journey will take him but our prayer is that he will know that the Living God accompanies him every step of the way.